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Sameera Khan, the Washington DC correspondent for RT (the Kremlin-backed broadcaster formerly known as Russia Today), has apologised after sharing bizarre memes defending the gulag.

She tweeted claims that the Soviet forced labour prison camps allowed “freedom of speech” (when they were a tool of a politically repressive regime), provided “education, music and theatre” and “two-week annual holidays” for prisoners and – the greatest sell of all – involved “no leg-irons and handcuffs”, in line with her pattern of Stalin-sympathetic tweeting.

She then apologised for the content, tweeting “I have just found out that the memes I shared re: Stalin’s gulags were inaccurate. My apologies to all those who were offended”, adding: “I also in no way intended to make light of the tragic mass persecutions they took place under the Stalin regime and I again apologize for sharing this misleading and offensive information.”

Khan’s gulag whitewashing echoes a series of surreal tweets by the LGBTQ+ Society at London’s Goldsmiths University last month, which made outrageous claims about their “compassionate, non-violent course of action” and “theatre groups” before deleting the tweets and being condemned by the university.